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CHAPTER 2. THE PUBLIC SPHERE 20
Through participation in these “institutions of sociability,” Habermas suggests a
notion of the public emerges, and the idea of “public opinion” is transformed from
“mere opinion” to “a reasoned form of access to truth.” In Habermas’ interpretation
of Hobbes’ view in Leviathan, opinion is for the first time connected to
conscience, and held to be separate from the public realm:
Because the subjects were excluded from the public sphere objectified in the
state apparatus, the conflict between their convictions could not be settled
politically and, indeed, was completely banned from the sphere of politics
(Habermas 1989, 90).
The idealized public sphere emerged as part of the political realm positioned
within a special place in the schema of social realms, between the completely private
realm of commodity exchange (civil society), and the sphere of public authority
(the state). The idealized public sphere, while composed of private persons,
nevertheless embraces the notion of a public, of private persons acting together in
their common interests. Thus, this is the beginning of a recognition of a private
realm insulated from the state that includes reasoned convictions or opinions of
individuals. This notion is extended, according to Habermas (1989), by Locke’s
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in which the “Law of Opinion” provided
the later foundation for Bayles’ distinction between opinion as “prejudice”
and opinion as “critique.” Criticism, the product of “public discussion among
critical minds,” clearly required interaction, while prejudice could be formed by
individuals acting independently (Habermas 1989, 140). Rousseau identified the
notion of the “general will” or the “common interest” as a “sort of public opinion,
a consensus of hearts rather than arguments” (Calhoun 1992, 18). Rousseau,
wrote Habermas (1989, 99), “wanted democracy without public debate.” Thus,
while Rousseau saw the general will as produced by the public, it was not through
the instrument of rational-critical debate. It was Kant, though, suggests Habermas
(1989, 104), who made the leap from opinion and criticism to public opinion, and
the public sphere.
2.2.2 The Function of the Idealized Public Sphere
From this discussion, it is clear that the function of the idealized public sphere,
in Habermas’s conception, is to enable the citizens to discover the general will